A new patent awarded to Facebook this week could have some big implications for the entire social media industry. The world’s largest social network now own the patent for the news feed.

Patent #7,669,123, first unearthed by All Facebook, credits Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg and seven other current and former Facebookers as inventors and assigns the rights to the patent to Facebook

, Inc.

Depending on what this patent actually covers, Facebook could use it to protect its intellectual property and force other companies with news feeds — e.g. MySpace